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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25518595">These Dark Days</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoomedKelpie/pseuds/DoomedKelpie'>DoomedKelpie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Death Note (Anime &amp; Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - High School, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2018-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2018-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:47:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,536</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25518595</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoomedKelpie/pseuds/DoomedKelpie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>L is forced to transfer to yet another high school.</p><p>(DISCONTINUED)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Note: This is actually older than the publication date I set because I hadn't posted it anywhere until 2018.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>L turned toward his alarm clock as it started beeping loudly. Without looking away from the screen of his laptop, he hit the button to turn the machine off. He continued typing for a few more minutes before reluctantly closing the computer. He dragged himself out of bed and to his closet, where he removed a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt that were exactly the same as the ones he was already wearing. Quietly, L left his bedroom and went into the bathroom to shower, not looking at the red lines going across his skin once his clothes were removed. <br/>Before long, he was sitting at the kitchen table in his unique way with his guardian, Watari, as they ate breakfast together. L grabbed the box of sugar cubes and started dropping an unbelievable amount into his cup of tea. Once he had finally finished doing so, he drank it along with his meal of strawberry shortcake and a pile of supplements Watari forced him to take due to his insistence on eating a nutrient-low diet.<br/>“Ryuzaki, it’s almost time for you to go to school,” Watari reminded him.<br/>With that, L slurped down the remainder of his sugar with tea and stood up. He silently grabbed his backpack from next to the door before he started to walk toward his new school. Although it didn’t really show on his face, L dreaded the moment he stepped onto school grounds. After all, this was the fourth school he’d been transferred to since starting high school, and it was only his first year*. He walked slowly, but he eventually arrived at the building nonetheless.<br/>Upon entering the school, he ignored any looks he got and started to make his way to the office so he could find out what class he was in.<br/>XXX<br/>Light stared out the window of his classroom until the bell signifying the start of class rang. He then looked forward as the teacher entered the classroom.<br/>“Alright, everyone. Quiet down,” the teacher started. “A new student is joining our class today. Come in, Ryuzaki.”<br/>L slowly walked into the room, his back hunched.<br/>“Go ahead and introduce yourself, Ryuzaki,” said the teacher.<br/>L rubbed the back of his neck before speaking.<br/>“Hello. My name is Ryuzaki Lawliet, but I prefer to be called L,” he stated.<br/>With that, L stopped talking and simply stared out at the class with his dull, black eyes.<br/>“Alright then, Ryuzaki, please sit anywhere there’s an open desk,” the teacher told him, ignoring what the student had just said.<br/>So, L then made his way to the back of the classroom and sat in the seat next to Light. He immediately curled up into his typical sitting position, which immediately caught the teacher’s attention.<br/>“Ryuzaki, please sit normally,” the teacher ordered politely.<br/>“If I sit normally, my intelligence lowers by forty percent,” L explained.<br/>A few of the other students in the class snickered. The teacher sighed.<br/>“We’ll talk about this later,” the man informed L.<br/>XXX<br/>As class went on, Light repeatedly found himself glancing at the new student. Light was so bored by the lecture on information he already knew, and L had already proven to be strange enough to be interesting. By the looks of it, L was just as bored as he was, although he couldn’t yet tell if it was because he already knew the information as well or if he was a slacker. Considering the boy’s appearance, he normally would have decided on the latter, but he somehow felt that it was actually the former. And so, Light ignored the lesson and spent the class watching L doodle pictures of sweets in his notebook.<br/>XXX<br/>Once lunch time rolled around, Light planned to start a conversation with L. However, it seems that his plan had been ruined when the teacher asked L to talk to him in the hall.<br/>“Ryuzaki, I know that you’re new, but you do have to follow the rules, alright?” the teacher told him.<br/>“I read the entire handbook. There isn’t a single rule about how to sit in the classroom,” L told him as he looked at the older man in the eyes.<br/>“It might not be written in the handbook, but it’s general good manners to not sit like that here,” the teacher explained. <br/>“I wasn’t joking earlier when I said my intelligence would drop by forty percent. That’s quite a lot, isn’t it?” L countered.<br/>Already realizing he wasn’t going to get anywhere in this conversation, the teacher sighed.<br/>“Look, Ryuzaki, I know how many times you’ve transferred this year already. I don’t want any trouble from you, alright?” he said. <br/>“I can assure you that the reasons for my transfers were not of my own doing,” L informed him.<br/>After giving L a strange look, the teacher just accepted what had been said and re-entered the classroom.<br/>L followed him and went back to his seat. After sitting in the position he had just been lectured for, he pulled a bag out of his backpack and opened it to reveal a pile of sweets. <br/>“Isn’t that a bit excessive?” Light suddenly asked with a slight chuckle.<br/>“I don’t believe that to be the case,” L answered as he bit into a panda-shaped cookie.<br/>“You’re certainly different,” Light stated. “So, what school did you go to before this?”<br/>“Hm… First it was XXXXX, then YYYYY, and finally ZZZZZ before I came here,” L answered.<br/>“That’s a lot of schools,” Light said.<br/>“Yes, it is,” L agreed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As L was reading a book about a crime from the 1940s, he felt his eyes droop. He sighed in annoyance. Even though it had been at least three days since he had last slept, he didn’t want to let his eyelids close. He stood up and slowly made his way to the bathroom. Without bothering to flick on the light, L turned on the sink and started to splash his face. Once he felt the blanket of exhaustion recede a bit, he stumbled back into his bedroom. However, a few minutes after he continued reading, the drowsiness returned, and L couldn’t fight it this time. He rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times in a final, desperate attempt to stay awake. But, inevitably, his eyes slid shut…<br/>“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”<br/>“MOTHER!!! FATHER!!!”<br/>“RUN, RYU, RUN!”<br/>SLAM! THUNK!<br/>“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”<br/>“NO!!!”<br/>“RUN!!!”<br/>“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”<br/>“RUN!!!”<br/>“NO!!!” L woke up with a scream.<br/>He bolted upright and gripped the fabric of his shirt.<br/>“AHHH! AHHH!” he screeched.<br/>L, unable to stop, continued screaming until he felt a pair of hands grab his arms.<br/>“Ryuzaki!” he heard Watari call out to him.<br/>The voice was enough to break L out of his terrified haze. He stared up, wide eyed, at the old man before he recognized the familiar, stinging pain in his arms. The blood drained from his already pale face, leaving it almost white as he immediately realized that Watari now knew the secret he’d been hiding for years. His gaze quickly went to his hand, where he found his knife that he didn’t remember grabbing.<br/>“Ryuzaki…,” Watari said slowly. “Calm down…”<br/>L took a deep breath in and forced his mask back onto his face. Watari gazed at him sadly, knowing that L hadn’t calmed down at all, but chose to hide his emotions from him.<br/>“Ryuzaki… what happened?” he asked, still holding onto L’s wrists.<br/>“It was just a nightmare… It’s not a big deal…,” L replied monotonously.<br/>Watari sighed.<br/>“If it’s something that makes you scream like that and start cutting up your arms, I’d say it’s a pretty big deal,” Watari disagreed.<br/>L flinched slightly when he heard those words, but he didn’t say anything back.<br/>“Come on. We have to treat those,” Watari said as he made L get out of bed and follow him into the bathroom.<br/>As the old man treated L’s cuts, he didn’t say anything, and L was just as silent. L watched the red swirl down the drain as the water washed away the blood. With the blood gone, he could see that the cuts were deeper than they usually were. Then, L was so busy with his thoughts that he didn’t even notice as Watari disinfected and bandaged his arms. And he didn’t even notice the tears that started streaking down his guardian’s face until he was pulled into a hug and he felt the tears drip onto his shirt.<br/>“Ryuzaki… You can’t keep doing this…,” Watari whispered sadly.<br/>But still, L couldn’t bring himself to respond or hug the man back. After a few minutes, Watari released him from the hug and calmed down his own emotions.<br/>“Alright. You have school tomorrow, so you should go back to sleep,” he told L. “But we are still going to talk about this. Alright?”<br/>L nodded, unable to try to argue against the man on the subject. So, L slowly made his way back into his bedroom. However, rather than do what Watari instructed him to and go to sleep, L spent the rest of the night staring up at his ceiling with his thoughts rapidly shooting through his brain.</p>
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